"Who on the height of power would stand must be Hard as the rock to those who dare his arm; To the indifferent, cool; and tenderly Treat the young faults of those who mean no harm. "The sunshine warms the serpent in the brake: Then crush his head while lasts his sleeping hour, Nor wait till, fresh envenom'd, he awake. There still are snakes enow where there is power." Whether he discovered by the similarity of the writing with the signature of the safe-conduct that the verses were the cardinal's own, or that he thought he saw some allusion to the minister's situation which discovered the author, I know not; but there were particular passages which he dwelt upon in reading; and the minister smiled approvingly, saying, "Well! exceedingly well, Monsieur Apsley. The poet loses nothing on your lips. Think you the verses good?" "Very good, your Eminence," replied Edward. "Were the arrangement of the lines somewhat different, they would make an excellent speech in a tragedy." "Ha! say you so?" said the minister, apparently well pleased: "I will give the author that hint. He has some small merit, and may perhaps hereafter aim at higher flights." "He has chosen a high subject now, sir," replied Edward, "But, by your pardon, I did not come here to read poetry, however good, but to request your Eminence to recognise my safe-conduct and to let me go forward on my way." Richelieu's brow became a little shaded. "So fast!" he said, as if speaking to himself, and then demanded, "Where do you wish to go?" "First to Niort," answered Edward, boldly, "where I was going when I was stopped, and then, by Paris, into Switzerland." The cardinal paused and gazed at him for a moment in silence, and then replied, "There are previously several matters to be inquired into. I trust we are here in France too courteous to stay any gentleman travelling through our country for purposes of mere pleasure or instruction, though there may be matters of enmity, and even war, between the two nations. I trust we are too honest to give a safe-conduct and then to deny its efficacy. But spies we hang, young gentleman." The words sounded chilling upon Edward Langdale's ear; but he knew that a moment's silence might be destruction, and he replied, at once, "I am no spy, your Eminence; and, whatever I may have done that is indiscreet, I came not to examine or report, and never will, any thing I see in this country. It is as safe with me as with yourself, lord cardinal." "Then you acknowledge you have done indiscreet things?" said Richelieu. "Probably," answered the young man: "who has not? But, still, I am no spy."